ADDRESS TO WORKERS AT CRAYFORD

Miss Roberts spoke on nationalisation when she addressed the workers at the Tucker Armoured Plywood Co., Ltd., factory at Crayford on Tuesday during their lunch break.

It was said that steel, cement and sugar should be nationalised because they were monopolies. That was not so, but there was an answer to that argument, she said. If they were monopolies, why make them bigger monopolies by putting them under Government ownership?

The steel industry had not had a major strike for 30 years, so it did seem clear that the employees were by no means dissatisfied. Similarly, cement and sugar were highly effective industries. Nationalisation, she told them, had never vet succeeded in reducing prices.

Questioned as to the Conservative policy on industries already nationalised, Miss Roberts said they would be prepared to sell back to free enterprise those sections of the road haulage industry which had already been nationalised, and to restore the former system of A and B licences. As wide a free enterprise as possible would be restored to civil aviation. The coal industry would be reorganised as a public undertaking and the work of the National Board would be decentralised, as would the railways, to give greater responsibility to men on the spot.